This is more like it - Spider-Man with requisite Lycra. Photograph: Shizuo Kambayashi/AP

We're getting used to our screen superheroes being a bit too, well, human. The strongest sequences in the new Spider-Man franchise feature Peter Parker struggling with his personal demons with nary a stitch of Lycra in sight. The series of caped crusader films that began with Batman Begins paint a portrait of our hero as scarred, disturbed and damaged. Heroes examines the pain of being an indestructible cheerleader. Now even full-blown monsters are succumbing to the noughties angst, with recent episodes of Doctor Who showing the Daleks not only developing personalities but suffering existential crises.

The latest BBC3 one-off pilot - hoping for a series commission to be announced this spring - features a werewolf, a vampire and a ghost sharing a flat. Apart from sounding like the set-up to a terrible joke, as the title suggests, their prime concern is with Being Human.

From the time King Lycaon of Arcadia was transformed into a wolf in 1550 BC by Zeus, who was furious at having his divinity tested - a story later immortalised by Ovid - to Montague Summers' investigations in the early 20th century, it's been clear the werewolf is an unhappy camper (with the notable exception of basketball-playing babe magnet Teen Wolf). But this latest screen outing highlights just how polite some of our supernatural drama and fantasy has become. As actor Russell Tovey, who stars as disaffected, geeky, once-a-month-a-werewolf George, says: "It's more pedestrian in style. Supernatural in a completely accessible way."

Domestic bliss is the order of the day, for these three misfits cursed to prowl the streets (or corridors, for agoraphobic ghost Annie). Only rarely do we spy delight in their eyes, as the irresistible monster passion comes furiously to the surface and explodes through piles of ironing, TV dinners and mugs of tea.

Now don't get me wrong, it's a cracking show. But what does it say about us that our mainstream superheroes must come laced with mundane foibles and flaws? Do our screen gods and monsters really have to be so desperate and anaemic to survive in the modern world?